Man Booker Prize 2013: New Zealand's Eleanor Catton Became Youngest Ever Winner

Man Booker Prize 2013: New Zealand's Eleanor Catton Became Youngest Ever Winner

* Eleanor Catton, the New Zealand author, at the age of just 28 years, became the youngest ever winner of the Man Booker Prize for her novel The Luminaries on 15 October 2013 at the London's Guildhall.

*  28-year-old New Zealander's book The Luminaries - an 832-page murder mystery based on the gold rush in the 19th-century is also the longest novel to ever win the coveted literary prize.

* She is the second New Zealander to win the Man Booker Prize, after Keri Hulme for The Bone People in 1985.

* Catton who started writing the book when she was 25-years-old was given the £50,000 by the Duchess of Cornwall at London's Guildhall on Tuesday evening. The judges picked Catton's audacious take on an old form, the Victorian "sensation novel".

* The youngest ever winner before Catton was Ben Okri who was 32 when his work The Famished Road won the Booker prize in 1991.

* Luminaries is Catton's second novel after The Rehearsal, which was shortlisted for the 2009 Guardian first book award.

* Luminaries is the longest ever book to win this Prize, beating Hilary Mantel's 672-page Wolf Hall which received the Man Booker Prize 2009.

* The year 2013 marks the 45th year of the Man Booker Prize. It was first awarded to P H Newby for Something to Answer For in 1969.

* Last year's winner, Hilary Mantel, had made history as the first woman and the first British author to win the prize twice. Her two winning novels - Bring Up the Bodies and Wolf Hall - have sold over 1.5 million copies.

Special about Man Booker Prize 2013

* The Luminaries is the longest work to win this prize in the history of 45 years of Man Booker Prize.

*  Eleanor Catton is the youngest ever winner of the Man Booker Prize.

*  It is also worth noticing that the 2013 shortlist for the prize was described as one of the best in the history of Man Booker Prize.

* Eleanor Catton is also the last winner of the Man Booker prize which at present is confined to writers from the Commonwealth countries and Ireland only. From the year 2014, entries from all over the world will be welcomed in the Man Booker Prize.